DNA and Eye Color and Lies

I love House MD. He's such an obnoxious smart ass, exactly the kind of person I would love to be if I thought I could get away with it. 

Here is a clip from the show convincing a woman to have the surgery she needs by telling her that her husband cannot possibly be the father of all six of her children because some of them have eye colors you can't have with two brown eyed parents. So he's basically blackmailing her: Get the surgery or I tell your husband about your wild sex life involving other men.

I originally heard from my sister, who had more college than me at the time, that two blue eyed parents cannot produce a brown eyed child. Based on information in popular media, such as the House clip above, and my sister's remark, I imagined that eye color would be a means in SOME cases to readily determine if "Sorry, she's lying. You cannot be the father." like in the clip above.

I'm wondering that because the Wikipedia page for Mia Farrow says she once "joked" that Ronan Farrow was fathered by Frank Sinatra, not Woody Allen -- and there's apparently articles speculating about that -- and I'm wondering if there's any way to reasonably infer if that assertion holds water based on publicly available information and also if you can infer anything about the parentage of her other biological children.

Mia Farrow has four biological children and ten adopted children. You can find a Wikipedia page for Ronan Farrow and photos of him online, but his biological siblings don't have their own Wikipedia page and it's challenging to find photos of most of Mia Farrow's children that clearly identify them by name. It's much more common for there to be a group photo which isn't necessarily clearly labeled.

However, children tend to look like dad because this is a survival advantage. Prior to IVF, if you gave birth to the baby, you knew you were the mom. But we have a lot of psycho controlling cultural stuff about wanting to insist women be faithful blah blah blah because the same is not true for dad.

So babies are more likely to get raised by both parents if they look like dad. And my two kids looked so much like their dad I had a stranger greet me by name -- as "You must be Mrs. Traylor." -- because he knew who I was based on seeing my kids -- "They look just like him."

Having looked at some photos, I think Fletcher Previn looks like Andre Previn and probably is his son. Ronan Farrow looks like Frank Sinatra and I would guess he probably is the son of Frank Sinatra, "Ol' Blue Eyes."

And Ronan Farrow has blue eyes as does Mia Farrow whereas Woody Allen has hazel eyes. So I thought I would be CLEVER like House MD and look up the eye equivalent of pea plant chart and check quick and dirty and what I'm seeing instead is:

For decades, eye color genetics were taught using a simple Mendelian model centered on a single gene with two alleles. In this framework, the allele for brown eyes was considered dominant, while the allele for blue eyes was recessive. This meant a person needed only one copy of the brown allele to display brown eyes, but two copies of the blue allele to display blue eyes...

The possibility of two blue-eyed parents having a brown-eyed child arises directly from the polygenic nature of the trait. A person’s eye color, or phenotype, is the final result of all contributing genes working together, and the combination can sometimes produce an unexpected outcome.

What I wanted to write was something about paternity and social stuff on a site called CalifMichele and instead I'm not getting anything that is a slam dunk "Yes, it takes TWO parents with blue eyes to produce blue eyes!"

But I'm wondering how we know that two brown eyed parents can, in fact, produce a blue eyed child.

I don't doubt for one minute that they have determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are multiple alleles contributing to eye color. My issue is that I seriously doubt that these studies checked the DNA of both the test subjects and their two parents and verified that the child really is the genetic combination of the husband and wife claiming him on their tax return as a dependent.

I've written previously on this site about edge cases in genetics. I'm well aware this is a relatively young field and we are still mapping how everything works.

But just like I believe that 23andMe is fudging the data to cover their butt legally and discourage clients from freaking out about the results, I cannot help but wonder if our "updated" understanding of eye color inheritance is perhaps a diplomatic way to say "Sure, honey. We will accept that Ms. Brown Eyes and her brown eyed husband are the parents and officially add that information to our study without verifying it by testing because testing is expensive and besides if you are lying, you probably won't agree anyway!"

If you are Native American and trying to find a path forward on some of this stuff, I will suggest to you what a man with a PhD in chemistry suggested to me:

Get a copy of the actual study or skip it.

Because while Abstracts are supposed to be a short summary of the study and it's conclusion, they often aren't. 

And "popular" articles in laymen's terms tend to be worse, not better, in that regard.

I do what I do because I have a genetic disorder and I'm a victim of incest and I'm too truthful to be good and I've spent DECADES hammering out how to write about certain topics and how to support my inferences etc.

But most people doing studies are going to have money and professional reputation at stake and be dealing with test subjects who may be unaware of or hiding family secrets. So they have motive to fudge the data to get it done and keep their grant without someone coming after them with an ax for ruining their life.

And they may feel it's not a big deal to sweep the occasional weird data point under the rug by saying "Sure! We accept that you two had this kid!" But multiply that across many studies and it becomes "common knowledge" and "verified science" and that's a problem if it's not actually TRUE.